Jonny waits in the driver’s seat, hands on the wheel, engine running. They’d agreed Paloma wouldn’t be around for the pickup. If Allen’s man, Jorge, seems suspicious in any way at all, Jonny is to gun the engine and fly. Paloma will be at a safe distance and will find a way to flag him down again. You can’t expect me to trust her just because you do, Paloma had said. What’s to say this isn’t just another trap?
Jonny sighs, eyeing the recessed doorway up the street, the only sign betraying Paloma’s vantage point a tell-tale curl of smoke. Can he really blame her for not trusting anyone? He’s found out enough about her to suggest she’ll probably have trust issues for the rest of her life. And hasn’t Jonny felt the same himself for days too? And about Paloma herself – he thinks of his notes scribbled down into Hebrew, copied literally into a different alphabet. But now he feels even more exposed without her by his side, unease slinking down his back.
Looking into his rear-view mirror, Jonny spots a tall, fair-skinned man approaching with two loaded carrier bags. He curses himself. Why the fuck didn’t he ask Allen what Jorge looked like? Or asked Jorge himself, when he’d got details of where to meet? He squints, the man’s decidedly shorn head coming closer, so tall his head is already out of the mirror’s frame. He looks completely different to any native South American Jonny has ever met.
A little of the tension leaves Jonny’s chest. What had Allen said? Field security operatives. The best in the business. He wasn’t sure 160how he felt about it when he first heard that private security was used to support news crews operating in frontline locations. An extra pair of hands is all well and good – help with operational details like food, water and fuel in places where they are often in short supply. But an extra pair of eyes on his every move? What if they aren’t necessarily focused on the same goal? He turns in anticipation, but the man is already walking past, too swiftly for Jonny to examine him more closely.
‘Damn,’ he mutters under his breath, white porcelain gleaming up at him from his lap. Jonny tells himself it’s the jolt of adrenaline that’s making him feel slightly sick, and not the prospect of potentially having to use one of Paloma’s stun-gun darts. He looks up just as the passenger door opens. Before he can blink, the man is inside and closing it. They definitely hadn’t agreed Jorge would just get in without so much as a by your leave.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Jonny surveys his unexpected passenger with what he hopes is his most threatening, intimidating expression. ‘Get the fuck out of my car! Vamos!’
But the man just laughs.
‘What’s my name, buddy?’
Some more tension drains away at the unmistakable cadence of the man’s accent. Still, Jonny finds himself clinging on to the steering wheel for dear life.
‘I’ll eat my fucking hat if it’s really Jorge,’ he mutters, trying not to look at the dart in his lap. Its presence is suddenly making him feel worse rather than better.
‘Now we can do business,’ the man answers, strapping on his seat belt. Jonny hesitates. He’s becoming increasingly sure of the man’s true origins with every word of his deep, heavily accented English. He’s Israeli. Who else would Allen call on, with her history in the Middle East? And any private security agency she knows in this part of the world is almost certainly going to involve agents from Mossad – Israel’s shadowy and brutal intelligence 161agency, revered and feared in equal measure the world over. But no Israeli ever routinely wears a seat belt.
‘Hang on a second,’ he mutters. ‘What actually is your name?’
‘Jorge,’ the man answers, Spanish accent suddenly impeccable. ‘Vamos!’ He motions at the traffic scudding past.
‘No,’ Jonny answers as emphatically as he can manage. ‘I can’t. My friend …’ He trails off, instantly realising his mistake. In the same instant he sees Paloma emerge from her recessed doorway up ahead, only to pause almost immediately.
‘Shit,’ he mutters into his lap, willing her not to jump to the wrong conclusion – that this man isn’t Jorge at all.
‘Listen, buddy,’ the man continues like they’re just two old friends chuntering back and forth. ‘I’ve got everything you need. But handing it all over on the street isn’t a good look, you know what I’m saying?’
‘Where are your bags?’ Jonny pictures the plastic carriers he’s sure he saw the man carrying as he walked past.
‘In the trash. And they were stuffed full of it to start with. I picked the right car because you were gawping at them. Your boss wouldn’t tell me anything else about you.’
‘Still,’ Jonny mutters. Putting the car into gear, he wills that Paloma stays where she is. Steering with one hand, Jonny makes a thumbs-up sign with the other, waving like an idiot. He can only hope that she sees him.
‘Make a right two blocks up,’ the man says.
Jonny holds his breath, he’s about to drive straight past Paloma. On cue, her unmistakable outline appears in his peripheral vision, staring purposefully into the car. Jonny turns the allotted corner into a quiet side road. If the man notices, he doesn’t say anything.
‘Over here.’ Jorge waves at the kerb.
Jonny stops but keeps the engine idling. Paloma reappears in the rear-view mirror, hovering on the corner. Jorge gets out of the passenger side as smoothly as he arrived. ‘Two minutes.’
162Bracing himself on the steering wheel, Jonny streams all his breath out in one go. If Allen can mobilise a Mossad agent speaking fluent Argentine Spanish in some suburban corner of Rosario on a matter of hours’ notice, then Paloma and Jonny are very far from being alone on their quest. In fact it suddenly feels like there are eyes on their every move all over again. A germ of a thought begins to seed somewhere in Jonny’s mind but he can’t quite surface it clearly.
‘Open the trunk,’ Jorge commands, back by the passenger door. Jonny makes a show of getting out, unlocking the boot. Surely Paloma won’t attempt to tangle with a situation that looks under control. Out of nowhere, Jorge lets out a belly laugh.
‘I can see her. Don’t worry. No one is going to get hurt.’
Of course you can, Jonny thinks, watching uneasily as supplies are loaded into the boot – food, water, petrol. Everything they could possibly need to travel below the radar for days. He doesn’t bother asking where it all came from. Jorge slams the boot closed.
‘Suerte,’ he says, throwing a thumbs-up to Paloma for good measure. Jonny resists the urge to reply with good luck to him too, and settles for a nod. But Jorge has already disappeared.
‘What the fuck?’ Paloma is back by the car just as quickly.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ Jonny answers, walking round to the passenger seat. ‘We’ve got everything we could possibly need, and more.’ He stops short of telling her about the two pistols he also saw Jorge loading into the boot. Much like the stunning darts, their presence is making Jonny feel worse rather than better.
‘But we agreed.’ Paloma flings herself into the driver’s seat. ‘And then you go and let a complete stranger into the car.’
‘I know what we agreed. And he wasn’t suspicious. That’s the point. We are going to get nowhere fast if we don’t trust each other. You can’t do this alone, and neither can I. The sooner you accept that we are in this together, then the faster we’ll get somewhere —’
163The car squeals interruption as Paloma accelerates away. ‘How can you expect me to trust you if the second we agree on how to approach something you go ahead and do the exact opposite?’
‘What would you have had me do? Kick him out of the car? Throw a punch? Scream bloody murder? Nothing actually happened. And now it’s over. We’ve got everything we need. We’re already on the road. We’re already on our way —’
‘You are, you mean.’
Jonny blanches. ‘Me? What are you talking about?’
‘You know what’s waiting at the end of all this. To you, this is all just about landing the ultimate scoop. About breaking the news story that’s finally going to make your name. “The United States stole babies trafficked during the Dirty War”. But it’s my life, Jonny, don’t you understand that? I’m running from everything I’ve ever known with no idea where I’m going to end up, at all. But to you, it’s still just a story. Just a job you’ve got to do.’
Jonny opens his mouth, closes it again, considers the hundred different things he could say in response before settling for the cowardliest of all. The silence takes root, thickening between them even as fresh air roars through the open car windows. Allen did well, Jonny thinks, focusing on the practicalities of the situation to avoid the emotions that are rising within him. She told Jorge to deliberately pick a spot that got them on and off the main highway with a minimum of fuss. The estancias are already spreading out on either side into more limitless horizon.
‘I know you think I’ll never understand,’ Jonny finally says, watching Paloma’s grip tighten on the steering wheel. This isn’t what she’d been expecting him to say. ‘It’s unimaginable. It’s almost unbearable to even conceive of it. But doesn’t how hard I’m trying count for something?’
‘If you want me to trust you, that’s what I need you to explain. I know why I’m so upset and angry. But why the hell are you? Why are you really doing all this?’
164Jonny hesitates. Doesn’t she mean the exact opposite? That he isn’t nearly angry enough? Wasn’t she expecting a far more aggressive response to a complete stranger climbing into their car out of nowhere? Wasn’t she expecting him to fight back too, when that masked man leapt towards him from her fucking doorway? And what about when he failed to react fast enough for her during that riot outside the bank? But Jonny’s reply just sticks in his throat, thickening and hardening with every passing mile.
For the truth is, Jonny knows exactly what she means. He knows his obsession with this particular story goes far beyond anything that can be explained away by investigating in the public interest.
And can he blame her? Why should someone like Paloma, betrayed in a way that no one could possibly imagine unless they’d been through the same thing, trust someone like him? This is the thought that finally propels some words out of Jonny’s mouth.
‘Because it happened to me, too,’ he replies softly, staring at the limitless horizon. ‘We all have lies in our past. I told you. I still don’t know my full story either. You probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you the bits I do know.’
‘Try me.’
‘I had …’ But the words stick in Jonny’s throat, so he has to start again. ‘I once had a twin. Still have a twin, I mean. At least I have no reason to believe she’s dead. Then again, I had no reason to believe I ever had a sister, let alone a twin, before.’
‘I don’t understand. You’re a twin?’
‘Apparently.’ Jonny hangs his head. ‘I don’t remember her. And I have no way of finding out where she is now. My dad took her when he left. Just upped and disappeared. My mum never told me she even existed. I only found out years after Mum died and I met my grandparents. Turns out she’d let my dad take my sister and my grandparents had disowned my mother over it – although that was never the reason I was given when I asked what had happened 165to the rest of our family. Like I said. It’s complicated. And right now there’s nothing more important to me than finding out the truth about your past, not mine. It matters to me so much that I’m putting myself in more danger than any sane person would consider doing in a million years …’
He trails off, holding his breath, heart fluttering in his chest. Has he said enough? He casts around for more mechanics but comes up blank as the acres of pampas grass stretch into oblivion all around them.
‘That’s … that’s pretty messed up,’ Paloma replies after a moment.
But Jonny can’t bring himself to say anything else, suddenly completely spent.
The miles scud past. Jonny’s eyelids flutter, consciousness hovering between dream and reality. Beside him, Paloma accelerates, squinting every so often into the rear-view mirror. Is she looking forward or backward? The thought ripples in for the briefest of moments before finally, Jonny’s eyes close, the sunlight too dazzling to resist. Finally, his dreams are only of vacant, blissful dark.